Sad Day for the Ruhr Metropolitan Area

19 people died and over 300 were injured yesterday at a huge techno music festival – “Love Parade” – in my metropolitan area. I heard the news about a mass panic, stampede and deaths in the early evening yesterday, but I have to admit it took some time to completely register in my brain. Like it probably always does with sad news of this magnitude. Or maybe that was due to the alcohol level in my bloodstream yesterday and the fact that I was busy at our annual dart & barbecue event.
I might write about that and today’s day at the zoo tomorrow. (How many times recently did I announce to write a post later and never get around to do it *wonder*?) But I’m rather exhausted right now because of the busy weekend and right now I’m watching news reports in which they try to analyze the catastrophy and how this could happen and who is responsible

My Bro1’s girlfriend’s nephew went to the festival, but Bro1 texted me this morning that nothing happened to the boy and that he got back home safely, thank God.

A few days ago I already read on some news sites that quite a few persons were concerned about the safety issues. The festival ground could accomodate max 500.000 people, but over 1.000.000 were expected. Authorities and the police said, they had plans to deal with the mass of people. Sadly enough they obviously didn’t :-(

What’s really infuriating right now is, that nobody wants to assume responsibilty for this catastrophy. The press conference today at noon was such a joke and as a usually proud inhabitant of this metropolitan area, I’m rather embarrassed by this kind of behaviour from the people in charge! They didn’t give any real answers but hid behind the police investigations that are going on.

Such a sad weekend for our metro area, state and country…